A meat giant gobbles up another meat giant

We live in the era of meat mergers. In recent decades animal-farming companies, gobbling up competitors, became giants. Then those giants merged. Now, a meat titan is coming back for seconds.

The New York Times is reporting that Tyson has been successful in its hostile-takeover bid for Hillshire Brands. Measured in dollars, the $6.1 billion purchase is the largest consolidation in the industry ever — though other mergers have meant more when measured in terms of impact on farmers and consumers.

Even if this deal doesn’t violate anti-trust law, there are problems with this kind of consolidation, he said. “When all the power is so centralized in these behemoths, they end up writing their own rules in Congress and fighting the reforms to protect consumers and farmers,” he said.

When the Obama administration sought to reform the animal farming industry, many farmers, some visibly frightened, risked their livelihoods by speaking publicly about abuses. But industry squelched that attempt.

Now, the industry lobbyists are working to reduce the number of inspectors in slaughterhouses, while speeding up the lines. There is some logic to this, Leonard said, because producers will compensate by conducting more testing for pathogens. But the chickens already move down the disassembly lines “obscenely fast, in my opinion,” Leonard said.

The deal does have a small silver lining: Tyson’s victory means that its competitor JBS — the largest meat producer in the world, which owns Pilgrim’s Pride — lost. “I like to keep my oligarchies all-American,” Leonard joked. (JBS is based in Brazil.) “But to be honest, what bothers me is the loss of local control. Local communities don’t keep the profits, and they lose control over their economies. And now that’s moved from the little chicken towns to an international scale.”

It’s not much of a silver lining. JBS may be the largest meat producer in the world, but Tyson is the second largest. If we want a change from this era of meat mergers, we’d need to pass tough anti-trust laws, Leonard said, as we did in 1921.